The enforcement division of the SEC recently reported record results for their latest fiscal year with more than 700 enforcement actions and more than $6 billion in penalties and disgorgement. Likely, 2023 will be another year of record enforcement. And as much as financial firms don’t anticipate running afoul of the SEC or other regulators or auditors, planning for disruptive events is important for all types of financial services operations, where an occasional mistake or event has a widespread financial impact on investors.
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In our "How Should Your Business Intelligence Team Spend Their Time?" blog post, we wrote about the varied roles of Business Intelligence teams across firms and what functions BI teams spend their time on vs. outsourcing to third parties. Here we look at the key initiatives that BI teams are focused on, how they prioritize those initiatives, and how those initiatives should be integrated into the firm.
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Against the backdrop of macroeconomic challenges, global asset managers are facing a dilemma, as falling revenues across the industry in 2022 hit both management and performance fees, while the need to spend on technology upgrades to enable growth and serve clients continues unabated. How does a firm manage costs, boost profitability and support client needs simultaneously?
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For years, insurers have used short-term investments to protect capital while also generating a return, similar to a Treasury bill index fund or another similar benchmark. Although they typically offer lower rates of return, short-term investments like CDs, money market accounts, government bonds, Treasury bills and other marketable securities are highly liquid and can be easily converted to cash, giving insurers the flexibility to withdraw money quickly, if needed. Short-term investments also offer lower risk with more stable returns during periods of higher market volatility. Any increases or decreases in the value of an insurer’s short-term investments are directly reflected on the company's quarterly income statement; therefore timeliness, accuracy and efficient management of these investments is critical.
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The asset management industry, in line with all other industries worldwide, has entered the fourth industrial age, also referred to as Industry 4.0—an age in which processes that have traditionally been undertaken manually are becoming automated and positively disrupted and transformed through different technological means such as robotic process automation (RPA), artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), culminating in intelligent automation.
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Closed End Interval Funds (CEF Intervals) are an interesting case study in the expanding market of retail alternatives. The versatile product wrapper enables product managers to build a strong, limited liquidity alternative portfolio, yet still has the '40 Act characteristics that allow it to access a broader and deeper range of retail investors than most alternatives. These characteristics have driven intervals to be the primary product that opens the door for retail alternatives convergence.
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COVID-19, quiet quitting, talent shortages and sourcing, ghosting, revenue pressures, cost cutting, and global economic and political uncertainties, to name just a few of the factors managers need to juggle in these modern times. Disruptors in and of themselves, are exhausting to solve but make no mistake, asset managers do need to solve them. Layer in increasingly complex and often manually labor-intensive operating environments and overcoming these challenges becomes all the more daunting—and costly. In the end, and as different as they are topically, they all share one commonality; they have a significant impact on a manager’s ability to focus on their core remit—to produce favorable economic results for their clients.
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Helping people achieve retirement readiness isn’t as simple as telling them how much they need to save. Multiple factors compound the ability to save, including income level, outstanding debt, longevity, overall health, domestic arrangements (partnerships, children, etc.), retirement age, and even the type and place of work. These factors aren’t fixed or constant—they vary by demographic and over the course of a lifetime. The number of scenarios is almost limitless, but consider a few of the more significant inputs.
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